This multi-generational family story follows roots from 19th‑century Westward movements to Nevada City and Penn Valley, California, where the family built cattle ranches and farming enterprises in the early 1900s. A pivotal turn is securing Sierra Foothills water rights (the 1921 irrigation district) and placing land in perpetual conservation easements to protect the open landscape. Across generations, the families have raised cattle, dairy, and fruit (pears, apples, peaches) and even grapes, emphasizing land stewardship, branding, and resilience amid drought, land pressure, and shifting economics. The narrative weaves in community life, cattle drives, and local lore, underscoring a deep commitment to heritage, education about farming, and passing the land to future generations.

Full Transcript of the Video:

Well, a long time ago, in Cornwall, my great-grandfather, James Inner, was born around 1825.

My grandfather immigrated from Northern Italy in 1906.

He was 35 years old.

My great-grandfather, Dawson Nichols, and his wife, Elizabeth Nichols, came from Indiana.

They started in 1851 and arrived in California in 1852.

Well, my grandfather came from Italy to Michigan to Nevada.

My dad was born in Nevada.

They ended up in Nevada City in 1913.

My family's been here since the late 1800s.

As a generation farmer to farm this land, our great-grandparents came here in 1901.

Well, it's from my understanding that my great-grandfather came over here in 1864 and then went back to England.

He got on a horse and he came out west.

I don't know exactly how old he was, but he came here in 1863.

My great-great-grandfather purchased a lot of the property from the railroad.

Well, back in 1852, John Arbegast came out here for the mining from Pennsylvania.

My great-grandfather from 1854 came here with mining and gold basically in his forefront.

Originally, what would be my great-great-grandfather, Philip Mounier,
saw the Gold Rush boom in California and decided that he was going to move to California and claim its riches.

So he came out here to go to work in the gold mines.

They decided this is a place not just for the mining, but that they wanted to make a home and bring the whole family.

But they decided to forget this place here, which was 160 acres originally.

He saw a need for agriculture in this time with the miners and he farmed in ranch chair.

If he was going to stay here, he would have to expand into other things to be able to make an op, raise a family or whatever.

So that's what he did.

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Really, it starts around 1916, so it was Burt Church and Ma Church or Kate Church.

As they're driving cattle from the Penn Valley area up into the Sierras,
they recognized that there was water moving from the upper Sierras down.

So they saw an opportunity there to bring water to the agriculture that was suffering at that time.

And it wasn't until 1921 that they get to move forward and start to form an irrigation district.

Actually, Burt sat on our first board, same with Mr. Brown of the Brown Ranch and Guy Robinson and a number of others.

But it's that moment that starts the district and they hired a gentleman by the name of Ale Whisker to be the first general manager for a dollar.

And so he was able to go out and find the water rights that the district is formed on.

And even to this day, those water rights have stood the test and have provided a significant market advantage to our agriculture here in the Sierra Foothills.

You look at the cattle that are coming out of the Central Valley versus the cattle that are coming out of the Sierras and ours are heavier, ours are healthier.

Same with all the other crops, all the truck crops that are coming out of our area.

So the ranch is about 552 acres.

It was formerly more than a thousand acres.

We run about 50 head of cows and have a couple bowls and sell about that many calves each year.

My dad died in 2003, but two months before he died he put the property into a conservation easement.

And what it does is it's perpetual and it protects the property from ever being developed or subdivided, which is really the legacy of what my grandfather and my great grandfather wanted for the property.

Because a conservation easement runs with the deed and it doesn't matter who owns it, you can't develop the land.

Yet it allows us to run the cattle and pay our costs.

If you have your land no matter where in the country it might be, if you have it under a land trust, the open space is always going to be there.

It's kind of a peaceful feeling.

It's hard to pinpoint what I love most about this place.

There's something very natural and very basic about connecting back to nature.

This is not the home place that originated as Agalino Dairy.

That started out in 1915 and went to 1975.

This one is made by Neil Johnson, an old trapper that helped us in the mountains a lot.

This one here is made by Lawrence Personini, who helped us a lot.

So you see what's important with a brand, you look at these things right in here, there's a notch to relieve the heat.

The brand won't be blotchy.

They have to have some relief in there so that the heat is able to get out of there.

I think it's just trying to do what you do.

These cattle are trained to eat, browse and brush.

In other words, we can't just sell this herd, wait for the drought to be over and then go buy a whole new group of cattle because the land that we run on, those cattle won't know how to use it.

This particular operation that we have, it's really tied to keeping that bloodline going.

I'd just like somebody to say, hey, you know what, they had a good piece of land, they had good cattle, they had good horses, they had good dogs and they did good for the community.

Since I was a little boy, I was destined to do what I'm doing today.

I was about a year old when my mother and father built a house here and so I grew up here, still live here and still operating the ranch.

I don't know why my father did it, but whenever he would go to do something with the cattle or on the ranch, I was always in his arm.

So I just grew up attached to it and took a liking to it.

I was eight years old and I rode on the first cattle drive we took out of here for that particular lot.

That started in 1962 and we still do that today.

This area, a lot of the United States is getting away from and they forget the roots of where agricultural started.

It started in the backyards of people growing their own vegetables and raising their own meat and milking their own cows and the barter system trading with folks and getting through the winters on what they could produce.

75% of the food I raise, you got to buy the salt and season and all that stuff, but other than that, pretty much raise it.

Yeah, there's a majority of the folks don't understand where their food and fiber and natural resources come from.

For our kids to grow up with that understanding, that's part of our job.

It's also part of our job, I think, to educate the rest of the public on where their food and fiber comes from.

A little hand sickle there, that's what they used to cut the hay when my dad was a kid.

And they just kept walking and just kept cutting, they kept them things razor sharp.

It's securing for the land, maintaining those fences and watching out for that livestock.

And just treating them like they're part of your family and your lifestyle.

Having this land handed down generation to generation just shows the sustainability and the care of the land.

This area is amazing on how many old time farmers and ranchers that are still here and that their generations and generations are running.

I just think it's wonderful that we can continue to pass on these legacies, good ethics and hard working.

We have everything.

I couldn't ask for a better life.

This is where my heart's embedded.

I can't imagine not being here.

I plan on dying here.

This is where my heart's embedded.

This is where my heart's embedded.

I'm looking to put into conservation easement and have it protected for grazing.

That's kind of our thought, huh?
Yeah, that way it can't be developed and add more people to our county.

The ground stays as it is because it's been in the family for, well, since roughly 1880, 1890.

I'm not exactly sure what year, but somewhere in that neighborhood.

It's amazing, beautiful little place in the Foothill Valley and I get to call it home.

What do you think?
We're in Penn Valley, California on the Brown Family Ranch, the Flying MB Ranch.

My grandfather was actually born here.

He started out really young wanting to work to land and to clear the brush.

He built his first little building here when he was only like eight or nine years old.

They worked early in the mornings and late into the night.

They had turkeys and sheep and pigs and so they had everything.

And our family is still going.

We're down to almost 200 acres still.

We run about 50 calf operation, just strictly beef cows.

There's a passion of mine to take care of them.

Spoiled rotten.

And I've always been told that those cows are put here on earth for us to be good stewards and for really not ours or the higher powers above us.

Oh, that's Patches.

That's my little daughter.

That's her bottle-fed calf.

She was actually raised in the front yard.

They do keep the ranch going and they pay their way and so the only way you're going to be able to do that is if you do take care of them.

Our family is committed to keeping the farm together.

We enjoy living in Nevada County very much.

We enjoy the open space ourselves.

And open space has become a larger issue in our county than there's more push to preserve it.

The area was planted to pears and they thrived here for 60 years until about the late 50s, early 60s.

They were hit by pear decline, which is a disease that kills pear trees and blight, which is a bacteria that goes in the blossoms.

At that time we had 10 acres of apples and they weren't susceptible to the same disease as the pears were.

So today apples and peaches grow very well here.

We like the foothills soils, create a good tasting piece of fruit.

So we've been making apple cider on the farm for about 45 years.

Apple cider is raw juice from the apple.

It's not been pasteurized or it's not filtered.

It's not pasteurized.

It's just bottled and consumed as fresh as it can.

I can control the pommas pump here and fill each cloth.

We're putting about three boxes of apples in to make about six to eight gallons of juice.

This is an old-fashioned, older-fashioned rack and cloth press.

Still the best tasting cider is made on a rack and cloth type press without any pressing aids and it's also the most efficient way to squeeze all of the juice out of the apples.

Put five tons of hydraulic pressure on the mash.

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We have to switch from cows to sheep here and it's a whole different side.

How's that?
That's right where we need to be.

We have a smaller chunk of the land.

It's not what my dad's operation was.

It's not what we have now.

And of course the economics of it.

Cost of feed has gotten so exorbitant.

And just that we're getting older and can't manage as many animals.

So we found that we had to reduce numbers and just do what's manageable for us.

For shearing and caring for the feet and everything that you have to do on a yearly basis.

We get older and slower and it gets harder.

So we've had to adapt.

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It takes two of us.

Get him moved.

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Get through.

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Well there's 30 acres here and my brother's got like 9 or 10.

And then him and I both together have got 280.

My brother and I both grew up just down the road here and my dad was born in the old house down here.

When he's going to school I think the most kids of eight grades was like 16 or 18 if I remember rightly.

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The grapes were put in in 1984.

The winemaker for Nevada City winery.

I got acquainted with him and he kept talking to me about growing grapes and that's how it started.

So we made our own vines, put the sticks in the ground and grow them and plant them in the vineyard.

When we had that downturn in 09 or whatever it was, nobody wanted grapes, nobody wanted to do nothing.

Nobody was making any money.

But I stuck with it.

I don't know why, but I did.

I had to work out to support the ranch of course.

Driving a log truck and run equipment and all that stuff and then I finally bought a truck and done that for like 30 years.

I bought this from here.

It's a 69.

I bought it brand new.

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I parked the truck and went to work for another outfit for another 22 years.

I think it was.

You might say I'm retired.

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Well, I left for a while, but I did come back.

They say you always do, but as it turned out, I didn't know how much interest I had in it until I started doing it again.

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This was a 640 acre parcel when I grew up on it.

We ran dairy cows, we ran goats, we ran sheep, we raised pigs.

They did everything.

My uncle originally sold this in 79.

I started buying it back in 99 or 98 somewhere in there.

So it's pretty much all together, you know, as one ranch.

It's basically a big ravine, almost a canyon.

I do have a creek that runs through it year-round, which is nice.

There's digger pines, oak trees, live oak, water oak, black oak, white oak.

The main ditch feeding here, my grandfather said it was put in in 1870.

The old timers, what they did, they put a level on a board and they wanted at least a quarter inch every 10 feet.

In the real flat areas, it would be exactly a half an inch.

So it's just amazing to me that with an old level on a board, you know, how they could do that.

Some of them bring back good memories and there's one parcel in particular.

It's got the creek on it and everything, the ponderosa pines.

There's an old road there and that was the old road that used to pretty much be from Grass Valley to Lincoln.

I think you have to have an interest for things like this.

It's kind of nice to own it all now and know so much about it.

I don't want to see it developed because it's set up quite well.

Two houses on it, four barns, two acre pond.

I like it for all the things I hated it for before.

You know, the too quiet and all that, nobody around.

You know, I like that now.

A lot of work, milk and cows morning and night.

It's six years old when we started.

This here is a bunch of the old harness that was originally here,
the grandpa and great grandpa used to use.

It was fun.

We had chickens, hogs, cows, horses, everything.

I've rode horses all my life since I was born.

I owned horses, rodeoed and everything.

And a good horse will go anywhere you want him to.

A lot of people say you can't get him here, you can't get him through that.

They got to go wherever I lead him.

I was probably in first grade, second grade when I really remember working alongside with my grandfather
and going out and working the cows with him and stuff like that.

And definitely it taught me a strong work ethic.

He wanted to declare this spot and this is one of his favorite spots up here.

So there was a million dollar view up here.

You can see the Sierra Mountains and see the valley and it's pretty darn neat.

I wish my grandfather was here to see all this.

It was awesome working alongside my grandfather.

Me and him were pretty tight.

But we had a lot of fun too though.

It wouldn't all work.

Things that you didn't think you were important when you were a kid,
now you catch yourself thinking how much more important it is
than what it does for the land.

Look out here, how could you not wake up in the morning
and love what you get to go do?
The work ethics that you had when you worked in your farming ranch
when you were a kid had a lot to do with who you became.

I'm so fortunate that I'm the fifth generation of ranchers here
and now my kids are here, my grandkids are here
and I think that's just, it's a great testament to how my family love this land.

So, hope I get to keep doing it for a long time, you know what I mean?
Well, I think it takes a certain kind of person to be involved in agriculture.

I think you definitely have to love the land.

You have to be willing to put in a lot of hours of hard work
for maybe not so much return all the time.

But it definitely is a wholesome life
and I think there's a lot of value to the lessons you learn working with the land.

But I think it's a calling for a few people and not everyone.

I mean, I think there's a lot of people that don't understand that bond to the land.

It's long days and it's, you know, I said to Jim many a times,
if it didn't get dark in the summertime at 10 o'clock
we would never have enough brains to come in
because we just, we were out till it's dark
and it's a love of the land, I guess is the best way I can
and our animals and our gardens and it's a draw to keep that going.

And that's what's important to us.

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I've been raised here in this community all my life which is 75 years ago
and so I'm very happy to still be here.

I was the last there standing and we had about 260 acres.

Freeway came through and we had 240 acres.

Every June we'd cut hay and we'd get it down and it'd be drying in the field
and every June it'd be a summer rainstorm
and as soon as we stopped raising hay it never rained again.

We finally cut that back but we still raise cows.

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Most of us had a mountain range somewhere to take the cattle up there
in the summertime, relieve the pressure on the pasture here, grow more hay.

Down here we irrigated and so forth and we'd gather the cattle together
and drive them up the road.

It took five days and we spent the summers up there.

When my grandmother was alive they moved the pigs and chickens and cows and the horses
and everything, the whole shebang up there and set up there.

There was no electricity.

We had springs for water, fish all over the place, deer, more deer than cows.

It was an idyllic place for me to grow up and I intended to do that the rest of my life.

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We did that for years and years and years.

I did a lot of other foothill ranchers and I feel them still do it.

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Then there are very few of us old timers I guess really left who have been here all the time
and that's a great source of pride and I'm very happy to now be able to meet people that have met since I was a kid.

Some of them are almost as old as I am and still doing the same thing,
like Reader and like the Robinson's and people like that who are very dear to me.

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Hanging on to land in the current economic situation with the size of ranchers that we have been used to
is becoming almost impossible.

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I don't think there's going to be much in between like the cattle ranchers that I grew up with.

That's changed.

We can't do it anymore and I think it's going to go unfortunately that direction.

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The majority of the ag community is fiercely independent.

Within the last 20 years I think that wall is coming down and we're finding that we have to come together
because there's less of us.

We might be over here, they might be over there, but we have to come together and working towards the end result.

The days of being fiercely independent, you can't survive anymore standing like that.

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Gary, I guess I'll send you in the front.

Put somebody in the big parking lot across from the bar so they don't swing way out there and go around a bunch of cars.

You might leave somebody there because what happens a lot of times if there's people out there,
they want to go up the hill and we don't know it and then they can watch for it.

And you just go along.

If you see them starting to go off somewhere just swing back, push them back on the road
and then get on back ahead of them or whatever.

Take like Little Fred, take Mark.

Who else we got?
Keep Caitlyn with you and then you two end up in the front all the way down.

Right, right, straight over the hill.

See that little building?
And just check that bottom end down there for me and check that ravine out.

I'll get everybody else lined up.

Okay, this is our third day of the drive coming home.

We're in North San Juan this morning getting ready to break.

We're going to come out the gate, hit Highway 49, head up through North San Juan and head for the Reader Ranch.

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Originally there was probably 4,000 head of cattle running through this mountain.

Now today there's probably 300.

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A lot of these cattle will be here maybe 15 years in a row.

So their mothers were here, they'd pop those calves what to eat and where to go.

They know the country and they know where they're going and they know how to teach their calves.

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And then when we get them home we sort them all out and it becomes payday for the ranch.

This is basically step one of what the whole year has evolved into.

This is the sixth generation on the Reader Ranch right here.

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The number of riders that we'll use will vary from anywhere from 6 to 12 or something like that.

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There's no hired hands within our operation, it's all friends and neighbors that like to help.

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As you're driving these cattle, you know you're kind of surrounded by nature, you're moving through it.

It's just a real pleasant experience, it's a lot of fun.

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It's a lifestyle that we embrace and it's a big part of our payment to us.

We like it, we love it, it's the lifestyle.

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Yep, it was a real good day.

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The ranches aren't being held like they used to be.

As a cattle woman, I have seen so many ranches disappear.

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That seems to be the main objective of the last two or three generations is to just see how long we can hang on.

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Ranching is observation.

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You have to be aware of your surroundings and in tune to what the land is telling you.

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Ranchers I feel are great stewards of the land and we're proud of our legacy.

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We take care of it, we want to improve upon it, we want to leave it to our children.

We hope that they will pass it on to their children and that they will take pride in it.

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I believe there's somebody out there that's going to want to carry on this type of tradition.

Somebody will have a passion and want to do it.

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I think your roots are part of who you are.

My grandchildren are the sixth generation to have lived on this ranch and I just want them to remember and appreciate how we got here.

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My daughter wants to continue and her plans are to return here.

I told her each generation can only do so much so you'll have a lot to improve upon.

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People are, I think, finding that eating fresh food and having sustainably grown crops, they're seeing the importance of that.

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I'd say probably 50 to 75% of the kids growing up today don't know where their food comes from.

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When you realize what it takes work and care-wise to produce something like a steak, it's eye-opening.

I think it's good to know that the sacrifices are not only made by the animal but on behalf of the people that have done the work to bring that to you.

It is just good to know where your food comes from.

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People would think that their food is safer coming from the grocery store than right off the farm or the ranch.

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Most folks today are at least twice, three times removed from the land.

So it's really important that you get these folks to come out, meet the grower, see what's going on.

It's education is what it is.

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We're seeing a resurgence of folks wanting to know how their food is produced, where it comes from, and who does that.

And they can only see that and learn that by coming out here to the farm and having direct interaction with us.

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It's pretty amazing when you ask a five or six year old little child, where does milk come from?
Oh, it comes from the store.

Everything comes from the store.

There's a huge disconnect there.

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Buy local.

Get to know where your food comes from.

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Food and fiber is the mainstay of our life and our livelihood.

And we're just fortunate to live in California that has some of the best agriculture opportunity in the world.

And a lot of folks have forgotten that.

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That's a big thrill when people really appreciate what they've learned or what they see happening and have a better feel for what it takes to grow food
and produce what they eat.

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Perseverance conquers all things as grandma would say is important because it will get you through some tough spots onto better times.

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Agriculture is so precious, but it's so tough that it takes a bunch of people who don't know any better to hang on to what's left.

Mining is great, but agriculture keeps us alive.

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I think just being a good person and working hard probably is the kind of message that my parents gave to us.

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The legacy I'd like to leave is how we actually work in harmony with nature.

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This is what we want to do.

We'll keep doing it at whatever it costs.

And that's hard to do.

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You'd have to jog my memory, but I think we covered the basics of it.

Yeah, I can go back to when Gary and I were just little guys.

It started snowing one day.

And the neighbor went out to town.

We'd build a snowman in the middle of the road.

A big one.

I mean, we had the lighter to put the top on.

And here comes truckman back down the road and he stopped right in front of the house.

And he opened the door and looked out and he started laughing.

He shut the door right through the middle of the snowman.

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Hey, about the end of it? About the end of it?
Yeah, I think that's huge.

What?
Yeah, I think all the things you've taught us as kids, I think is huge.

I don't know if I taught anything to anybody.

Yeah, I think you're about as honest as they come.

I mean, what he says he means.

You run a drone, do you? And it flies around and makes pictures? That's quite understandable.

It's too much technology.

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If I were out somewhere and said, what do you do for a living? I would say, I raise cars, which is partly true.

But it's just been by necessity.

It's been fun.

When you've got another two or three days, I'll finish the rest of the story.

This generation know that it seems like they're more into that darn social media stuff.

I don't know if I'm jumping off track on you guys, but I hope you guys and peace out together.

I have no idea where that comes from.

I thought the cows were bad.

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I can't shut it off.

I bet one of them could.

No, certainly they won't.

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Oh yes, I started driving at a very young age.

I got my first ticket when I was 11, coming out of Grass Valley for speed and no driver's license.

But what were they going to do? You know, take my license, you know.

Right there.

He didn't say rolling yet.

Oh yeah, rolling.

Should I start talking to him?
Okay.

He's just going to carve his mind.

Okay.

It makes harder life for me than you're supposed to.

Because we're crazy, that's why.

Because we love it.

It's a family affair, for sure.

Lots of flies, lots of sheep.

Let's go.

Well, Black Bart lived and worked here under an alias by the name of Jim Martin.

When Black Bart was captured, they put him in jail down in the Bay Area in San Francisco.

And there was a man, Beard Wooster, who worked for my great-grandfather here as the bookkeeper for the sawmill.

And he wrote a letter back to my great-grandfather and said, Jim, I'm here in San Francisco
and they've captured Black Bart.

And of course, in those days, it wasn't uncommon for somebody to go to a jail
and look at what a notorious highwayman looked like.

And he said, you will never believe who Black Bart is.

He is Jim Martin, our employee at the sawmill.

Hey, I just had to tell you how it is, you know what?
That's just, yeah, that's, well, it's all done.

Geraldo, what time is it on?
So you asked me what time it was, and I told you how the watch was made.